Worst job ever, or not?

[jon f mn]

What's the worst job in the farm? Taking down fence has to be about the worst. This fence had to come down both because I don't want a fence there and because it was so poorly done I can't see how it held anything in. What was the worst was out in that pasture they had our up a fence about 20 ft or so inside the line fence because they didn't want to fix the existing one. Then they took the posts and left the wire, most of which I found with the brush cutter. Digging that out of the grass was a real chore! Got it all done, at least what I can find anyway. Now if it would quit raining I could get back to plowing.

 

[coshoo]

Its gonna be fun watching you whip that place back into shape.

 

[Elton Fancher]

Never worked in tobacco have you?

 

[Logan in SE Texas]

taking down old fence is one of the worst farm jobs. Getting barb wire out of rotary mower is right up there too. Looks like you have some pretty good "tools" there for the job. I prefer using the heavy welding gloves to handle barb wire, they have "almost" enough thickness to keep your hands from getting tore up and the long cuffs help too.

 

[farmerjohn]

When I was a kid we had a hay field poluted with dock, Dad mowed it and had Mom and us boys pick out the dock plants before he raked it. I thought I was going to die.

 

[IA Roy]

At least the barb wire you show doesn't look like it is breaking as you roll it. About 50 years ago our landlord bought an 80. I think we tore about 3/4 mile of fence out. I think there was an empty whiskey bottle every 50 foot or so.
The second 80 was sold a couple years later. I wonder why? Another neighbor bought that one. It seems like the current method of taking fence out is to hire an excavator to rip it out, then pile it and burn it to get rid of the wooden posts if there any and to get the sod out of the woven wire.

 

[lee little]

I agree with Elton

 

[Royse]

Broken unloader chain in the bottom of a frozen manure spreader.
Thawing it out so you can unload it with a fork is "aromatic".

 

[Adirondack case guy]

I have to agree with Royce. Repairing spreader, barn cleaners, and silo unloaders were no fun at all.
Loren

 

[Billy Shafer]

Cleaning chicken houses in July. In Texas.

 

[JD Seller]

Bottom rail in late July is a lot of fun!!! Not!!! LOL Cousins raised Burley tobacco in southern Ohio for years.

 

[Elton Fancher]

Well, I usually wind up getting a roll big enough to start giving me trouble, then I cut it off and start again. I have piles of it here and can't give it away. Boring job for sure. But we used to raise burley, and 20 or so acres of ear corn that we would pick by hand and scoop off, cut slabs at the old man's sawmill, as well as sawing lumber. Fork manure. Cut thistles with grubbing hoe. I have lots of nightmares about work.

 

[Bruce from Can.]

While I have taken out some old fences myself, never thought of that job as the worst job on the farm. Not a nice task, but not the worst. Most jobs that fall into the worst job category for me involve manure. Cleaning calf pens , fixing stable cleaners, manure spreaders, and now and then trimming hooves can be a rather unpleasant job. The best part about taking down old fence is that it is gone, and won?t need to be taken down again. And the satisfaction of ploughing, planting, or cutting hay through the spot were the fence used to stand, wasting your land, and harbouring weeds, is a tremendous feeling. A feeling of accomplishment you can enjoy every time you go over that spot, or look across the field, and see that mess gone.

 

[Harold Hubbard]

Don?t much think about it now, but growing up I hated picking stone, picking potatoes, and planting trees.

Fence? I?ll build new fence, or tear down old, but I really hate toggling up some old nasty fence that should have been torn down years ago.

 

[Rollie NE PA]

Been there and done that many times years ago and it always seemed to break on a Sunday morning.

 

[chuck machinist]

Can you raise taters up there in that soil Jon? CM

 

[indianabuckman]

Family put in 32 acres when I was growing up in Kentucky, now they put in 110 acres and you are right, it's not fun.

 

[MarkB_MI]

I never much minded rolling up fence, but out on the High Plains you rarely have to deal with tall grass.

For me cleaning grain bins on a hot day was about the worst. The last couple of times I did it I was so sick afterwards it took me a couple of days to recover.

Cleaning out a combine slugged with sunflowers in July is right up there, too.

 

[jon f mn]

Depends, you coming to visit?

 

[47fivewindow]

I'm with you Billy, and yes I have raised tobacco too.

 

[2late4me]

I'll trade you 2 miles of ragged fence for 1 heifer that didn't clean. Uff daa

 

[Tony in SD]

I nearly agree with Billy. Cleaning chicken houses any time any where is my idea of worst farm job.

 

[paul]

Barb wire isn?t fun. But, at least there is a finite end to the fence, you can see it from here......

Rocks. They are endless. You can work and work, and look behind you are there are still more. Just endless.

Probably the worse job ever was crop walking, dad didn?t do anything to control Canadian thistles, the whole deal was to walk the fields with a hoe and walk the small grains with a 5 gallon pail and strip the seed heads off. It was a pointless exercise when he did nothing to control the patches. I truely hated summer on the farm in my youth for the endless pointless thistle walking. It is one reason I don?t really consider going organic, too many bad memories.

Paul

 

[mikewood869]

Having to cut brush isn't fun

 

[machineman]

I agree with Billy Shafer and Tony in sd, cleaning out chicken house was the worst job. The wind always seemed to blow so that it blew back at you as you pitched it out the door into the spreader.

 

[notjustair]

Cleaning hog houses. Now everyone has a skid steer. Back then everyone just had the equivalent in numbers of children. My gosh I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I even farrow to finished hogs here on my place up until about six years ago and it was nothing like when I was a kid in western Kansas. That?s was miserable and so was that hideous steel wheel spreader.

Now the job I hate the most is fencing of any kind. I ran and moved more hotwire fences this summer to keep my herd in feed during the drought. It worked but I walked hundreds of miles in the same spots over and over to get it done. Now I am rolling up the last of the rotation grazing spots so I can cut the beans that border them. That?s insult to injury - rolling up fence for cows that are on barbed wire fences now to cut beans that aren?t worth anything.

 

[Stephen Newell]

Could be. I wonder if someone makes a roller upper machine for the wire. I have some I still haven't gotten up the nerve to roll up and it's probably in only 25'-30' lengths.

 

[Destroked 450]

I don't mind rolling up old barb wire but I hate messing with old rusted out woven wire.
I've got about 1000 ft of old woven wire fence to take down full of briers and small brush so I can put up a new fence between a pasture and hay field.

We raised tobacco when I was younger, forked manure out of the barn stables and picked up more rocks than I ever want to see again.
Today we have 3 500 ft poultry barns that I clean 7 times a year.
With a skid steer!

 

[showcrop]

(quoted from post at 15:52:26 10/28/18) When I was a kid we had a hay field poluted with dock, Dad mowed it and had Mom and us boys pick out the dock plants before he raked it. I thought I was going to die.

Farmerjohn, just look at how that job built your character, LOL.

 

[ss55]

We took out miles of contour line fences in the 1970s when parallel terraces became popular. Taking out old fences works easiest in early Spring before tillage starts. Old grass and weeds are dry and brittle, so rolling up old wire is easier that time of year. If the old wire is rusty or likes to twist badly, don't bother trying to reuse it, it will be more trouble than it's worth in a new fence line.

 

[Roger Tomfohrde]

We had a wire rolling device for long stretches of wire . It was bolted to the side rail on a H Farmall and ran off the belt drive pulley with a flat belt. It had cores made so you could spin a nut off and then the side and move the spool of wire with the core. The core could be popped out it you needed it for another. They were tapered. When we had the dairy we would move 20 to 40 rods of four strand wire fence in a two day period. That wire in the pic looks really new, the older stuff got really brittle and we would throw that stuff in the iron pile. I think my brother still has it but converted it to hydraulic. When the grass was short you could pull 20 rods of wire just sitting still.

 

[mmidlam]

Use an old 55 gallon barrel roll over the wire to wind it up.

 

[chuck machinist]

Your my next yt visit.CM.

 

[chuck machinist]

coming to plant taters!CM

 

[bison]

(quoted from post at 15:35:15 10/28/18) taking down old fence is one of the worst farm jobs. Getting barb wire out of rotary mower is right up there too. Looks like you have some pretty good "tools" there for the job. I prefer using the heavy welding gloves to handle barb wire, they have "almost" enough thickness to keep your hands from getting tore up and the long cuffs help too.

Got to agree,.When I bought my ranch I had to replace all 14 miles of the fence including posts gates and corners cause everything was in bad shape.
13 mile of 4 strands wire, some on/in the ground and under or trough roots bushes and grown into trees.